29th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States

The following amendment to the Constitution is proposed to preserve and protect the standard of living and quality of life in America from the effects of overpopulation. It explicitly precludes a dependence on the rest of the world for natural resources and requires an environmentally sustainable population. It does not preclude the consideration of other factors, such as labor force size, productivity, etc.

29th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States

The Congress shall establish a target population for the United States for the purpose of assuring a high standard of living and quality of life for its citizens. The target population shall not be higher than can be continuously sustained by proven reserves of domestic natural resources utilizing existing technology, or by trading such excess resources for others not available domestically. Also, the target population of the United States shall be below the level that, if applied globally, is determined by science to pose no threat to the global environment. The Congress shall establish immigration quotas consistent with achieving the target population. The Congress shall also enact policies that, while leaving people free to choose the size of their families, encourage the population to move toward and stabilize at the established target level. The target population shall be reviewed by Congress annually and shall be retained or adjusted as necessary.

What This Amendment Does and Does Not Do:

It forces Congress to address overpopulation and prevents it from ruining the standard of living and quality of life in America.

It forces the United States to live within its means in terms of natural resources.

It prevents the United States from contributing to an overall decline in the global environment.

It forces Congress to face the mathematical realities of immigration policy as an integral component of population management policy, instead of only viewing it as “our heritage” or as some kind of fulfillment of an unspoken promise to the rest of the world.

It does not say what the population target should be, nor does it define the standard of living or quality of life that we want to maintain, except to say that we must be resource independent and must not contribute to environmental degradation. But it does force our nation’s leadership to discuss and define these parameters.

It does not say what policies should be used to manage the native population, except that they should leave people free to make their own family planning decisions. The intent is to preclude the adoption of forced measures – things such as a “one child policy” or forced sterilization – which have been employed by other countries faced with overpopulation. Tax policy would be an example of an economic policy that could be used.

It does not say that we have to be independent in all natural resources, but that for those resources in short supply, we have other resources in excess for which they can be traded. For example, if we are short on oil, we should be able to pay for oil imports with exports of grain or lumber or some combination of these and other resources. If that’s not possible, then this clearly means that the target population would have to be reduced.

22 Responses to 29th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States

This opens the door for breding laws. That is a bad idea. It would also prove dangerous as it could create forced abortion laws. Controlled breeding or abortion are the only ways to control population sizes. If you think that people will be okay with that, I have a bridge to sell you. I can see the government being okay breeding laws, if it is any consolation.

Dave, I included the wording “… while leaving people free to choose the size of their families …” to address concerns like yours about “breeding laws.” I’m not sure what kind of “breeding laws” you have in mind, but this should prevent things like the “one child” policy of China. I believe that all that is necessary is revision to tax policy to encourage people to choose smaller families. The tax code currently rewards people with a tax deduction for every child. Instead, baseline tax rates should be reduced, while including tax “adders” for each child (or each child in excess of a certain number). It would also have to be indexed to income so that the birth rate is about the same regardless of income level. (It wouldn’t be fair for higher income people to more easily afford additional children.)

To prevent such a tax policy from becoming an incentive for abortions, abortions should also be counted as live births so that an abortion would not prevent the tax consequences. Admittedly, this would be difficult to track and police. There would have to be laws that required doctors performing abortions to report each procedure performed.

Yeah, it’s a tough subject, but one that won’t go away by ignoring it.

Normally, I’d have bounced this comment for violating the blog rules, but decided to leave it on display as a permanent embarrassment to “Tanisia.” Tanisia, a word of advice: don’t comment on blogs when you’re stoned. Or if you weren’t stoned when you made this comment, then you should avoid the internet altogether.

Are you aware of that little country called China? It’s land mass is basically the same as the USA. It’s Population is 4 times as great. I do agree that immigration, legal and illegal, is used as a federal political tool. And that the American working Tax Paying
Citizens are being screwed by both parties and the EPA. Honest politicians must set goals not impose edicts.

No kidding? There is such a place? Wow, somehow that slipped past me. I’ll have to check into it. Thanks for the tip!

Seriously, are you also aware that China is utterly dependent on exports, primarily to the U.S., in order to support their bloated labor force? Do you see any other Americas out there that we could turn to if we let ourselves get into that same predicament?

I’m of the opinion that the laws of supply and demand would adequately address our use of natural resources. No government intervention is necessary or constitutional (probably why you’ve made it the 29th Ammendment, huh?)when it comes to the population of the US.

Immigration reform and effective enforcement is required.

I’d rather see a more representative government beholden to their constituents rather than special interests.

I would propose the following:

No elected official may hold consecutive terms
No elected official may accept a campaign contribution while in office
The number of representatives will be one for every 30,000 citizens (see Article 1, Section 2 of the US Constitution on this on)
Congress shall recieve no pensions
Congressional pay shall be set and approved by a vote of the electorate.
Repeal the 17th Ammendment
Repeal the 16th Ammendment
Institute a value added tax to fund government
Nationalize the Federal Reserve Bank

Since Public Corporations are a construct of the state:

Public Corporations traded on a public exchange shall not pay executives a multiple greater than 50 of the average salary of all non-executive employees.
Bonuses for executives and employees shall be of an identical percentage of base salary.
There shall be no difference in the health care benefits, retirement benefits, severance packages, etc. shall all be identical as a percentage of base salary

The above executive pay limitations/restrictions shall not apply to private corporations that are not traded on public exchanges.

[…] In addition, at a time when our founding fathers scarcely understood the extent of the still-unexplored western reaches of our continent, they could never possibly conceive of the day when our land would become so populated that we’d be utterly dependent on hostile, foreign sources of energy for our very survival while congress sat idly by and did nothing about it. Not to mention the effect upon the economy, steadily driving more of our people into poverty and dependence on government assistance. If they could have envisioned such a time, they may very well have included in the constitution a provision for congress to enact population policy and manage our population. (See https://petemurphy.wordpress.com/more-good-stuff/29th-amendment-to-the-constitution-of-the-united-sta…) […]